"Spirit," NASA´s Mars rover, landed on the martian surface on Jan. 3.
While
NASA's latest mission to Mars may have seemed distant to most of the
population, the project hit a little closer to home for College of Arts
and Sciences research associate Paul Withers.
Withers had a
first-hand role in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's
$820 million mission, which successfully put "Spirit," a golf-cart
sized rover, on Mars Jan. 3 and hopes to place a second rover,
"Opportunity," on the planet by Jan. 25.
Withers, who has been
working with Boston University's Center for Space Physics since July
2003, said he first started working with NASA while working toward a
doctorate in planetary sciences at the University of Arizona.
Withers
said he was called in by NASA to "try to understand the Martian upper
atmosphere - what effects the seasons have up there and what it is
composed of."
"My involvement with the Spirit landing was
related to its entry into the atmosphere and its landing on the surface
as a member of an advisory group that looked at the predictions that
the NASA engineers had made about what the atmosphere would be like at
the time of entry," he said.
Withers said one of his main tasks
was to analyze and interpret some of the measurements Spirit made upon
its entry, including those of atmospheric pressure, density and
temperature.
"Looking at how temperature varies with altitude
can tell us about energy and momentum in relation to different
regions," Withers said.
The data can also reveal what kinds of clouds are in the atmosphere, he added.
Withers emphasized that his role with the project is not a full-time effort.
"I
don't have a particularly long-term involvement with the Mars rover
project," he said. "It's more an occasional series of conferences over
the telephone when important events occur. I'll be playing a similar
role next week when 'Opportunity' reaches its destination."
Withers
said he spent some time in December developing tools to analyze
measurements and computer programs to process data that the rovers are
equipped to gather.
Withers is currently the only BU researcher involved with the rover project, he said.
"The
supervisor at the Center for Space [Physics] has slightly different
research interests," Withers said. "Hopefully there will be an
opportunity to work with some of them in the future."
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